Aaron Karczmer is a senior executive with deep expertise in the areas of Enterprise Transformation, Global Operations, and Risk including Financial Crime, Cyber, and Regulatory. Aaron has served as a trusted advisor to the boards at both PayPal Holdings, Inc. and the bank boards at American Express. He has more than 20 years of experience building, transforming, and leading teams with an ongoing focus on growth and the customer while leveraging multi-sector partnerships, data, and operational rigor.
Most recently, Aaron served as Executive Vice President and Chief Enterprise Services Officer at PayPal. In this capacity, Aaron had global responsibility for customer service, risk and compliance policy and operations, and regulatory and government relations with over 10,000 employees and an operating budget in excess of $1B. Aaron also oversaw relevant product teams, including identity, customer service, risk, and compliance. He was a Director for PayPal, Inc. Board of Directors and co-chair of the Enterprise Risk Management Committee.
As leader of the Enterprise Services organization, Aaron was dedicated to protecting and enabling PayPal’s overall business and its customers (including providing key leadership and support for new offerings such as the PYUSD stablecoin). PayPal conducts business in more than 200 countries, and Aaron’s organization enabled the company to navigate the corresponding regulatory and legal entity complexities.
Strategic transformation is central to Aaron’s value proposition. During his time at PayPal, working with their leadership team and board, he developed and led an end-to-end Servicing Transformation as a companywide priority to enable the shift from being transaction-focused to customer-focused. Aaron also led the development and implementation of PayPal’s current financial crime, regulatory, and risk oversight (including cyber) programs and framework. In addition, under Aaron’s leadership of the fraud and seller risk functions the company achieved historic low loss rates while driving down good customer decline rates.
Prior to joining PayPal in 2016, Aaron spent nearly a decade at American Express serving in a variety of leadership roles and led the design and implementation of corporate-wide policy and compliance and financial crime risk methodology frameworks, new technologies, and organizational structures. Leveraging data and cross-sector partnerships has been a hallmark throughout Aaron’s career. These skills were honed early on at the New York County District Attorney’s office, where he held a number of roles including co-founding and leading a unit dedicated to combating identity theft and cyber crime.
Aaron partners with Endeavor Global, Inc. to provide mentoring support for entrepreneurs with potential for economic and social impact. He previously served as a member of the Polaris Advisory Council, advising the non-profit on its efforts to combat human trafficking, as well as a steering committee member of World Economic Forum’s Digital Trust Initiative. Aaron was also the Executive Champion for PayPal’s Veteran Employee Resource Group.
Aaron received his J.D. from Stanford Law School and served as a law clerk for the Honorable Samuel Conti, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California.